Justice Sometimes Needs a Break

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Judges are far more likely to let a prisoner out on parole if
they've just had a food break than if they've been considering
cases for hours, according to a new study.

Researchers don't know if it's the food or the mental breather
that makes rested judges more lenient after their breaks. But the
findings suggest that judges are like the rest of us: After
making a series of difficult decisions in a row -- about anything
from which features to get in a new car to the details of a
home-renovation project -- our tendency is to pick whatever the
easiest option is.

The study also shows that facts and laws aren't the only issues
that affect legal decisions. And chances are, the same phenomenon
affects doctors, members of Congress, university admissions
officers and other people who make important but repetitive
decisions.

"This is a necessity of the human condition: You get tired and
you have to replenish," said Jonathan Levav, an expert in the
psychology of judgment and decision-making at Columbia Business
School in New York. "It's important for people to understand that
legal decisions and human decision-making are one and the same."

"There's no reason to believe that biases that affect us in our
everyday decisions won't affect decisions in experts," he added.
"These are people, too. They're not machines."

In previous work, Levav had probed the mental fatigue that builds
in people as they shop for cars or new suits. After test-driving
dozens of models of automobiles with a variety of engines, colors
and other features, he said, he has found that people simply
don't feel like making decisions anymore. Eventually, they tend
to go with whatever radio comes with the car. Worn-out
clothes-shoppers, likewise, will eventually just grab whatever's
on sale or available now.

He started to wonder if the same thing could be happening in
weightier situations. So, for the new study, Levav teamed up with
colleagues at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. The
researchers compiled more than 1,100 judicial rulings made by
eight Israeli judges with an average of more than 22 years of
experience. All of the cases involved requests for parole by
prisoners.

From court records, the researchers could clearly see the time of
day each case happened and the order in which decisions were
made. The researchers also knew exactly when judges declared food
breaks. After analyzing cases based on all sorts of factors,
including severity of the crime and outcome of the case, they
discovered a strikingly clear pattern.

At the beginning of the workday and right after both of two daily
food breaks, judges ruled about 65 percent of cases in favor of
the prisoner, the researchers report today in Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences. But by the end of each
session, the probability of a favorable ruling was close to zero.
In these kinds of cases, leaving a prisoner in jail is the
easiest decision to make because it simply maintains the status
quo.

"Once you see the plot, it's almost like you don't have to do any
statistical tests," Levav said. "As judges consider more and more
cases, their likelihood of releasing prisoners decreases. But
when they take a break to have a meal, that likelihood pops up to
its original levels. It's almost like the judges have mentally
reset."

Any finding that reveals unexpected patterns in professional
decision-makers needs to be taken seriously, said David Schkade,
a decision researcher at the University of California, San
Diego's Rady School of Management.

Pilots and air-traffic controllers already take frequent and
regulated breaks because it is well known that they become
mentally depleted after conducting a series of repetitive tasks.
The new work suggests that judges and possibly other professional
decision-makers might do well to follow similar guidelines.

"This is a really surprising and important result," Schkade said.
"Despite their professionalism, judges still get tired mentally."

As for whether the newfound bias makes judges most accurate when
they're at their most strict or at their most lenient, that's
something Levav and colleagues are trying to find out. They're
mining through nearly nine years of data, looking at which
prisoners ended back up in prison after their release and
correlating that information with how close to a food break their
case was heard.

"That's the multi-billion-dollar question," Levav said. "What's
the cost of this bias?"